Chapter 40. Alice
ALICE
Alice’s feet pounded on the hard dirt. She scanned the road ahead, searching for the railway tracks. When they appeared around the bend, she veered toward them. Her shoes slid on the wood ties. She pumped her arms. She was headed west, back toward Bellevue, she hoped.
She looked for a break in the trees so she could cut back onto the road. She’d flag a vehicle down. But the tracks seemed to be curving and taking her deeper into the forest.
She tried to listen for footsteps. Was Simon following? She had a stitch in her side. She gasped through the pain. She wouldn’t be able to keep this pace for long.
She risked a glance over her shoulder.
Simon was about half a football field behind her, and Jenny was running behind him. Alice had bought herself some time with kicking Simon, but he was catching up.
Alice turned her head around and kept running.
The trees opened. She was coming up to a long wooden trestle over some sort of ravine.
She couldn’t tell how deep it was, or if there was a river at the bottom.
She had only a moment to decide if she should cross.
Surely Simon wouldn’t follow her over the bridge.
He wouldn’t risk Jenny like that. She tried to listen for a train, but it was hard to hear over her breathing.
She was at the beginning of the trestle. She paused for a heartbeat and held her breath. No immediate roar of a train or a whistle in the distance. She was going to cross.
She’d made it halfway when she heard the crack of the gun, the sound distorting and echoing, and felt a sharp, biting pain in the back of her calf. She fell forward, her body slamming into the rough wood. She gasped, wheezing for air. She looked over her shoulder.
Simon had run out onto the bridge. He was only about thirty yards away. Maybe less. She could see his bloody face.
“Get back here!” he yelled.
She stared at him in disbelief. “No! You shot me!”
“I had to stop you.”
She twisted around, while still staying flat. She wanted to see how bad her wound was, but she had to keep her eye on Simon, who’d taken another few steps.
Jenny had caught up to Simon and was panting beside him. “Oh, my God, Simon! Did you shoot her?”
“She broke my nose!”
“Let’s just leave.” She tugged at his arm. “I’ll drive.”
“No.” He raised the gun again and aimed at Alice. “Get off the bridge.”
She had only moments to get through to Jenny. She was her only chance.
“He’s never going to let me go, Jenny. He’s been planning on killing me all along.”
“That’s not true,” Simon said. “Just come back and we’ll talk.”
Jenny was saying something to him, pulling on his arm, her expression pleading.
“Why do you care about her so damn much?” Simon shouted at Jenny. The gun was still aimed at Alice. She pressed herself as flat as possible, which wasn’t flat enough. She wondered if she could climb down the side of the trestle, using the wood beams. Stupid plan. She’d fall.
“She clubbed me across my face, and you’re worried about her?” Simon was still shouting. “If we let her go, we’re going to get caught.”
“That’s not true,” Alice shouted back. “You can get away.”
“Shut up, Alice!”
“Why don’t you ever listen to me?!” Jenny said.
“Because you’re so obsessed with making Alice like you, you’re not using your head.”
“I’m obsessed?” Jenny was clearly enraged, her voice reaching a decibel that Alice had never heard before. “What about you? I heard everything the night you got drunk and forced Alice to make you sandwiches. You’re the one who wishes she was your mother!”
“Don’t say that shit to me.”
“I wanted to leave her at the farm. We could have left her at the hotel.”
“Fine. I’ll shoot her right now.”
He raised his arm again.
“I give up!” Alice got to her knees and lifted her hands into the air. “I’ll drive the car.”
“No, stay there,” Jenny shouted.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Simon said.
“We don’t need her!”
“Okay, then.” He pointed the gun again at Alice and let off a bullet that splintered the wood a foot away from her. She gasped and dropped back onto her stomach.
“Stop!” Jenny was crying.
“You’re either with me or you’re not, Jenny. Make your choice. Because if we let her go, then I’m as good as dead.”
“If you shoot her, I’ll never forgive you.”
Alice knew instantly that it was the wrong thing for Jenny to say.
“You won’t forgive me? After everything I’ve done for you?”
“You can’t hurt her. Not Alice.”
“Do you even love me? Maybe you’ve just been using me all along.”
“Stop saying these things.”
“Then what’s it going to be? We leave her dead or we take her.”
“We’ll take her! I’m sorry. You’re right. We need her.” Jenny was talking fast, begging.
“See, I don’t trust you now.” Simon was lifting his arm, sharpening his stance. His face was grim. Alice opened her mouth to beg Jenny to stop him, but Jenny was already reaching out.
To grab him? To knock away the gun?
No. Both her hands hit the side of his shoulder, shoving him. He’d been standing close to the edge of the trestle. There were no guardrails. He didn’t have time to balance. He stumbled to the side in a slow-motion drunken dance step. He flung his arms wide, trying to right himself.
“Jenny!” he yelled.
She didn’t move.
His weight was too much. His mouth was open, his face panicked. One arm reaching for the sky. Alice could see it all. He was tilting, sideways, gravity taking him, pulling him headfirst.
He was there, suspended, and then he wasn’t.
A long scream as he dropped.
Alice screamed too, hers joining the piercing sound of Jenny’s.
A thud, below. Rocks rolling, cracking into each other. Echoing through the ravine.
Then silence.
Jenny was on her knees, hands clasping the edge, leaning forward to look down. She shrieked his name. “Simonnnnn! Simonnnn!” The sound echoed through the ravine.
Alice got to her feet, limping closer to Jenny. The girl was going to fall too if she leaned out any farther.
“Jenny!” she called. “Move back.”
Jenny turned to look at Alice, her face streaked with tears, and her mouth open like she was still trying to scream but had run out of breath.
Alice reached her side and grabbed the back of her arms, tugged her up and away.
Jenny sagged against her, stumbling as Alice led them off the bridge.
She let go of her and moved to the edge of the ravine.
There was a thin trail on the sloped bank.
Animal or people, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t want to lose her footing either, but there was a chance he could still be alive.
She turned to Jenny. “Run to the highway and flag down a car.”
Jenny stared at Alice, her body shaking. She sank onto her knees in the gravel beside the railway ties, clutching at her heart. Maybe it was better she didn’t run anywhere.
“Okay. Just stay here.”
Alice made her way down the trail, keeping her body sideways, and leaning toward the hill so that her weight didn’t drag her.
She slipped a couple of times and grabbed at the dry bushes, praying they didn’t break.
She stopped, and scanned the hill below, but there was no sign of Simon.
Then she found blood. Ruby red droplets on rocks, a smear on the dust.
She moved down farther, the trestle seeming far above now. She couldn’t see Jenny but thought she could hear her crying. She scanned the hillside below.
A flash of color. Simon’s shirt.
Alice stopped so fast she nearly lost her balance. She regained her footing, but her heart rate was off-kilter, staggering with fear. A few feet below her, Simon was lying face up on a part of the hill that had flattened to form a small shelf. Boulders had blocked him from rolling farther.
“Simon?” No answer. No moans or cries. He could be unconscious, but something about the way his body had settled. It didn’t look right. She felt her throat tightening.
She crept closer until she was beside him. His hand was flung toward her. She reached out to feel his wrist. Her fingertips pressed against still-warm skin.
She held her breath, waiting to feel a flutter. Maybe she had the wrong spot. She moved her fingers up his wrist. Pressed harder on the veins. She checked for a pulse in his neck.
Nothing.
His eyes were closed, his face bloodied from when she hit him, and maybe from the fall too because there was a deep scrape down his cheek, with small bits of dirt and rock embedded. There was another gash on his scalp, and his neck was at a strange angle, his feet flung wide.
She was going to have to tell Jenny. Would she try to escape?
Alice had to talk her into turning herself in.
Alice didn’t like the way Simon’s arms were twisted, and even though she knew he couldn’t feel it, she moved them beside his body and put his legs closer together.
She turned his neck so that his body was straight.
If it weren’t for the blood, he could be sleeping.
She felt stickiness on her own leg. In the shock of Simon falling, she hadn’t thought about her wound.
She examined it now. Blood had soaked her sock and shoe.
The entry hole was on the side of her calf.
She couldn’t see an exit, but it was hard to tell with so much blood.
She took her other sock off, pressed it to the wound, and wrapped it around.
There was no sign of the gun near Simon. It had either fallen past him, or he’d lost it on the way down. She thought about the knife and lifted the hem of his shirt. He didn’t have it.
Alice started back up the ravine bank, her breath ragged, her injured calf throbbing. She imagined she must be in shock, and she’d suffer more pain when that small grace wore off.
It was harder, climbing the steep bank, and took more strength. She was exhausted by the time she found Jenny halfway up, sitting cross-legged near an area of jagged gray rocks.
She was staring at something in her lap. Alice moved closer. Jenny shifted her body and uncrossed her legs. Then Alice saw that Jenny was holding the gun. She stopped.
Jenny looked up at her. “I found it. It was just lying there.” She gestured to the rocks. “Is he dead?”
“Yes.” She expected more of the screaming and wailing, but Jenny seemed to have gone somewhere else in her mind. Her face was vacant, her skin still wet from tears, and her eyes dull. Alice knew that feeling. When the pain was so enormous, it took everything from you.
Alice held out her hand. “Let me have the gun.”
Jenny frowned. “No.” She raised her arm, and Alice gasped, dropping lower. She flung her hand up, a foolish defense, but there was no bang. She opened her eyes.
Jenny had the gun pressed to her own temple. She was looking over Alice’s shoulder.
“It’s my fault,” Jenny said.
“He fell,” Alice said. “Listen to me, Jenny. This is important. He fell.”
“I pushed him.”
“He was going to shoot me, you tried to stop him, and he lost his balance. That’s what I’ll tell the police.”
Jenny looked at her, brows furrowed, but she didn’t lower the gun.
“Please put the gun down. Please. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“All those people were hurt because of me.”
“You didn’t make Simon do those things.”
Jenny was getting upset again. Her breaths faster, and her hand shaking.
“I loved him, and he loved me.”
“I’m sorry. I know.”
She pressed the gun harder against her temple, her face twisting, eyes squinting, like she was building up the resolve to pull the trigger.
“I know you want to be a good mother. Mothers do what’s right for their baby, even if it hurts them.
You keep going. For your baby. Even if it costs you everything.
That’s the price we pay.” Jenny was looking at her now.
“I had a son. He died while I was in labor. I would have traded places with him a thousand times over. Think of your sweet baby. Please!”
Alice crawled closer. She reached forward, her hand wrapping around Jenny’s hand on the gun, then gently pulled it away from her head. Slow. Careful.
Jenny met her eyes and took one big deep breath. Alice froze. Was she going to yank her hand back? Pull the trigger?
Jenny let go of the gun, and slumped forward, burying her face in her hands as she sobbed. Alice rested her hand on Jenny’s bowed head and stroked her hair.
“You’ll be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Jenny only cried harder. “How can you say that? Simon’s dead. I’m going to prison. My life is over.”
“You’re so young. You’ll get parole one day and can build a new life. Anything is possible.”
“Not for me.”
“Yes. For you—and your baby. You’ll always have a part of Simon.”
Jenny took a few more deep, shuddering breaths, and Alice thought it meant that she was calming down, but then Jenny raised her head with a bitter smile, her face wet.
“The baby isn’t Simon’s.”